Does all God's creation include aliens?

This news from the Vatican's chief astronomer probably caught the pope's attention, and that is one boss I would not want to irritate.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, says that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Funes says that such a notion “doesn’t contradict our faith” because aliens would still be God’s creatures.

The interview was headlined “The extraterrestrial is my brother.” Funes said that ruling out the existence of aliens would be like “putting limits” on God’s creative freedom.

I've written before about whether God could have created aliens and, if so, what it would mean to a handful of religions. Raelians would be stoked and I imagine Scientologists would say they knew it all along.

As a Christian, I have no problem with this, though I struggle to understand whether these other beings could also be saved by a messiah -- little "m" because it couldn't possibly by the same Messiah. Could it?

Pope urges Israel to help Christians in Mideast

Pope Benedict XVI on Monday asked Israel to ease travel restrictions for Mideast Christians, who in Gaza and the West Bank and places like Lebanon have been under attack.

Benedict has made concern over the future of Middle East Christians a
priority. Economic problems as well as violence in the Holy Land and Iraq have led Christians to emigrate from the region.

"I pray that, in consequence of the growing friendship between Israel and the Holy See, ways will be found of reassuring the Christian community that they
have a secure future in the region," Benedict said.

He said problems facing Christians are related to Israel-Palestinian tensions.

The Holy See recognizes Israel's legitimate need for security and self-defense and strongly condemns all forms of anti-Semitism, the pope said.

At the same time, he urged Israel to alleviate travel restrictions causing hardships for Palestinians.

The ambassador, in his remarks released by the Vatican, said Israel would do its utmost to help strengthen the Christian communities in Israel as their essential presence in the Holy Land is deeply rooted and historically self-understood.

This is a bit of a different tone from the Holy See than when the Vatican's former ambassador to Israel said, "relations between the Catholic Church and the state of Israel were better when there were no diplomatic relations."

Pope Benedict wins

Before he arrived in the United States last week, many American Catholics held old notions of Pope Benedict XVI as "God's Rottweiler," as completely unlike his pastoral predecessor. My how quickly the current can change.

The vanishing American Catholic

The changing landscape of American Catholicism -- the fact that 1.3 million Latino Catholics have joined Pentecostal churches since immigrating -- is considered the elephant in the room for the future of the church. Still, it's story that has been told before, and in light of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United States this week, and maybe in order to fill all that copy dedicated to his trip, it's being told again here.

“I feel whole here,” Mrs. Calazans, 42, said one recent Sunday in the Astoria sanctuary, the Portuguese Language Pentecostal Missionary Church, as she swayed to the pop-rock beat of a live gospel band. “This church is not a place we visit once a week. This church is where we hang around and we share our problems and we celebrate our successes, like we were family.”

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For if Latinos are feeding the population of the church, many have also turned to Pentecostalism, a form of evangelical Christianity that stresses a personal, even visceral, connection with God.

Today, it has more Latino followers in the United States than any other denomination except Catholicism; they are drawn, they say, by the faith’s joyous worship, its use of Latino culture and the enveloping sense of community it offers to newcomers. As the Pew survey revealed, half of all Latinos who have joined Pentecostal denominations were raised as Catholics.

They are part of a global shift. Pentecostalism, the world’s fastest-growing branch of Christianity, has made such sharp inroads in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, that in an address to bishops there last year, Pope Benedict listed its ardent proselytizing as one of the major forces the Catholic Church must contend with in the region.

Benedict's visit concludes today with a packed Mass at Yankees Stadium.

Pope Benedict's White House address

Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United States has been getting seemingly wall-to-wall coverage on religion blogs and has supplanted religion coverage at major papers. Here is Reuters' report on his speech at the White House this morning:

Saying he had come as a friend of the United States, Pope Benedict urged Americans and their leaders on Wednesday to base their political and social decisions on moral principles and create a more just society.

In an address to President George W. Bush at the White House on the first full day of his U.S. visit, the pope also called for "patient efforts of international diplomacy to resolve conflicts" and promote progress around the world.

"I come as a friend, a preacher of the Gospel and one with great respect for this vast pluralistic society," Benedict said in a speech after Bush welcomed him to the White House at a ceremony that included 21-gun salute.

Bush cited the role of faith in U.S. life, which the pope had praised in remarks to journalists traveling with him as he crossed the Atlantic.

"Here in America, you'll find a nation that welcomes the role of religion in the public square," Bush said.

"In a world where some evoke the name of God to justify acts of terror and murder and hate, we need your message that God is love. And embracing this love is the surest way to save man from falling prey to the teaching of fanaticism and terrorism," he said.

The pope, marking his 81st birthday, was full of praise for American society, sprinkling his speech with references to the founding fathers -- citing the Declaration of Independence and the first president, George Washington.

But he made no specific references to issues such as abortion and the war in Iraq, appearing at pains to avoid saying anything that could be seen as taking sides in the presidential campaign apart from saying that freedom called for "reasoned public debate."

Benedict and Bush both oppose abortion and embryonic stem cell research, but differ on questions such as the Iraq war and capital punishment.

Instead, the pope concentrated on America's religious roots, which he said were a driving force in a process that "forged the soul of the nation" and won the admiration of the world.

(Photo: New York Times)

Pope says pedophiles can't be priests

Pope Benedict XVI said on Tuesday that following the Roman Catholic Church’s child sexual abuse scandals in the United States, the church is reviewing candidates for the priesthood with the objective of excluding those with a tendency to molest children.

Speaking to reporters on an airplane taking him for his first visit to the United States as pope, he addressed the scandal in the U.S. that has produced more than 5,000 sexual abuse victims since it erupted in 2002 and cost the church more than $2 billion.

“It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church in general and for me personally that this could happen,” he said. “As I read the histories of those victims it is difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way. Their mission was to give healing, to give the love of God to these children. We are deeply ashamed and we will do what is possible that this cannot happen in the future.”

Apparently drawing a distinction between priests with homosexual tendencies and those inclined to molest children, the Pontiff said “I would not speak at this moment about homosexuality, but pedophilia which is another thing. And we would absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry.”

“Who is guilty of pedophilia cannot be a priest,” he added.

The Pope said church officials were going through the seminaries that train would-be priests to make sure that those candidates have no such tendencies. “We’ll do all that is possible to have a strong discernment, because it is more important to have good priests than to have many priests."

This from the NY Times. It seems like such a simple declaration, and yet it has taken so many years and cost so much pain for it to be made. Here's more on the pope's visit.

(That's a cutout image of the pontiff from the Mercury News.)

Luther still not on pope's good side

Was it rumor, innuendo, fabrication or simply sloppy journalism that laid the groundwork for the apparently erroneous article last week that reported Pope Benedict XVI was about to make nice with the long-dead troublemaker Martin Luther? Here's what seems to have happened.

It all appears to have started on March 2, when ApCom, an Italian news agency, ran a three paragraph article, here in Italian , merely saying that the pope and some of his former PhD students (the so-called Ratzinger- Schlerkreis), would discuss Luther during their yearly summer encounter in August at the papal summer villa at Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome.

APcom, said the seminar would discuss whether Luther “wanted a rupture … or intended to reform the Church but without traumas”.

On March 5, two days after the APcom report, the Turin newspaper La Stampa ran a story with the headline “Ratzinger reforms Luther. ‘He had many Catholic ideas. The theologian pope summons his students for a seminar of study on the heretic.”The article, seen here in Italian,Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Council for Promoting Christian Unity, as saying the choice of topics was meant “to favour a climate of encounter with Protestants.”

The only problem? It's a minor one in journalism, but the story's not true.

The day after the article in La Stampa, the Times of London reported that “Pope BenedictXVI is set to rehabilitate Martin Luther, arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity, but only to purge the church of corrupt practices.”

From there, the story took off,was repeatedby some news organisations around the world, was the buzz on the blogs, and even prompted an editorial critical of the pope by the Financial Times, called “Papal Indulgence - Cosmetic changes cannot hide Benedict’s dogmatism”.

The Vatican itself finally weighed in on March 8, when Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s chief spokesman, told the Italian news agency Ansa, that the Financial Times editorial was “totally without foundation because no rehabilitation of Luther is foreseen.

Pope attacks 'climate change prophets of doom'

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

And I thought President Bush was a Methodist.

However, when the reporter for the Daily Mail got to the meat of the pope's statement, which will be part of his message for World Peace Day in January, I had to agree.

"Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow," he said in the message entitled "The Human Family, A Community of Peace".

"It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.

"If the protection of the environment involves costs, they should be justly distributed, taking due account of the different levels of development of various countries and the need for solidarity with future generations.

"Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken."

In other papal news, the Vatican will issue Friday a doctrinal document on "some aspects of evangelisation."

(Hat tip: Luke Ford)

Vatican ambassador on Israel: 'Better when there were no diplomatic relations'

The Vatican's former ambassador to Israel has some frank words about his faith in relations with the Jewish state.

Italians have a wonderful phrase they use when things don’t work out as they had hoped: “It was better when it was worse.”

That was the thrust of controversial comments about the Catholic Church’s relations with Israel by Archbishop Pietro Sambi, currently the Vatican’s nuncio (ambassador) to the United States and formerly the papal envoy to the Jewish state.

Sambi, who was nuncio in Israel from 1998-2005, could not have been clearer about his discontent: “If I must be frank, relations between the Catholic Church and the state of Israel were better when there were no diplomaticrelations.”

He goes on in a long interview with www. terrasanta.net, an Italian on-line publication of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. FaithWorld has more of his opinions in English.

I want to pause here and note how easy it would be to turn this into a watershed moment for Catholic-Jewish relations, a revert back to 1960 or, worse, 1492. Sambi, it seems, is not trying to incite a pogrom or propagating the blood libel. He is reflecting on his experience with the Israeli government. (Yes, this is certainly questionable timing considering the peace summit at Annapolis next week.)

The Catholic culture regarding Jews has significantly improved during the last two papacies. Pope John Paul II was, of course, beloved by Jewish leaders, not least for his memorable visit in 2000 to Israel and the Western Wall. The German-born Pope Benedict XVI, who served in the Hitler Youth, also has proven a better friend of world Jewry than many expected.

Cardinal: Jews should change Talmud

Cardinal Francis George, who will soon take over as head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, recently sat down for a candid interview with John L. Allen Jr of the National Catholic Reporter. It's a wide-ranging Q&A, but I found what George had to say about Judaism and the Latin Mass to be the most interesting:

A related issue with the old Missal is the Good Friday liturgy, and specifically the prayer for the conversion of the Jews. Where do you think we are with that?

First of all, we have to clarify something, because there are two opinions and we've asked the Holy See to clear this up. During the Triduum [the end of Holy Week] you may not have a private Mass. So the first reaction is, well, that means you can't use the old Missal for the Triduum, so that's the end of that. Others come back and say no, that if you have a parish that is only Tridentine, then they would also have the Holy Week ceremonies from that Missal. I'm not sure that's permitted, and that's what we're asking.

If it is, would your preference be to use the language of new Missal for this prayer on Good Friday, even when people are celebrating the Tridentine rite?

If you're celebrating the 1962 Missal, that would involve changing the text of the prayer.

That can be done, yes?

Of course it can be done, and I suspect it probably will be, because the intention is to be sure that our prayers are not offensive to the Jewish people who are our ancestors in the faith. We can't possibly insult them in our liturgy … Not that any group has a veto on anybody's prayers, because you can go through Jewish texts and find material that is offensive to us. But if we're interested in keeping the dialogue strong, and we have to be, we should be very cautious about any prayer that they find insulting. 'They,' however, is a big tent. What my Jewish rabbi friend down the block finds insulting is different from what Abraham Foxman [national director of the Anti-Defamation League] finds insulting. Also, it does work both ways. Maybe this is an opening to say, 'Would you care to look at some of the Talmudic literature's description of Jesus as a bastard, and so on, and maybe make a few changes in some of that?'

Here's Jeffrey Weiss' reaction on the DMN religion blog:

My 2 cents: Exclusivist faiths inevitably make negative claims in their theologies about other religions. Jews want to say that Jesus was a fraud? Catholics (or Baptists) want to say that Jews got real problems in the hereafter of they don't accept Jesus as Savior? Well, it's what their religion teaches...I'm not sure I understand why members of the "other" religions bother to complain. Where we get problems, however, is when the theology leads to, say, pogroms or the Inquisition.

I agree that this shouldn't be much of a surprise. Remember what the pope said about there being "one true church?"

Pew: Americans know little about Muslims, Mormons

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a poll today on American understanding of Muslims and Mormons and opinions of Pope Benedict XVI. It's a follow up on this May report on American Muslim attitudes.

Pope says other churches not "true"

Not cool, Zeus. Pope Benedict XVI didn't quite say today that I'm not a real Christian because I'm not Catholic, but he might as well have when he approved a document that reversed a Vatican II principal and said non-Catholic denominations are "not true churches."

“Christ ‘established here on earth’ only one church,” the document said. The other communities “cannot be called ‘churches’ in the proper sense” because they do not have apostolic succession — the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ’s original apostles.

I've always thought my fellow Protestants were ignorant or prejudiced when they treated Catholics as non-Christians, like Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses. But now the pope has turned the table. It seems centuries of bloodshed are no longer reason enough for Christians to respect their differences.

This follows his relaxing Saturday of restrictions on saying the Latin Mass. Add to this recent list Benedict's Islam is "evil" comment last fall, and the former Cardinal Ratzinger is beginning to look like the pope people expected.